Barcelona, Spain: Barcelona Summer Conference on the Politics of Basic Income

Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) is organizing the first ever Summer Conference on The Politics of Basic Income. With the elections to the European Community Parliament in May 2019, UBIE has decided to focus on how to make basic income a hot topic during the campaign. For this, the Conference has been prepared so as to include a broad range of speakers, roundtables and workshops with the objective of designing a strategy that will put basic income in the debate to elect our future representatives.

The Conference will take place on the 13th to 16th of September in Barcelona and it will focus on political leadership, identifying key allies and spotting the challenges and opportunities of basic income in the political arena.

The program includes a welcome dinner, a day with round tables and speakers, and finally, a day full of participative workshops to allow participants to exchange ideas and design a strategy for making basic income a key hot topic in the European Union elections. There will also be a screening of a new documentary about basic income produced by Humanistas por la Renta Básica. A preliminary program draft is already available.

The first roundtable will revolve around basic income related pilot projects and local politics, which will count with the participation of Lluís Torrens, Ina Dhimgjini, Silvia Camean and Zeljka Topalovik (to be confirmed).

This will be followed by a roundtable on political parties and parliaments, with the presence of political representatives such as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Julie Ward, Member of the British parliament Ronnie Cowan, and Member of the Basque parliament, Julen Bollain, and professor José Noguera.

Known basic income activists will also contribute with their expertise in the third roundtable, on Basic income proposals at the European Union level. Here there will be Elena Ambruhl, Eda Tahiraj, Bru Laín (to be confirmed), Stanislas Jourdan and Guillermo Collado Wilkins. Lastly, the fourth rountable will be examining the need for a social base claiming the right to a basic income. Mayte Quintanilla, Hector Pojomovsky and the Marea Basica will explain how to go about this.

The views expressed in this Op-Ed piece are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of Basic Income News or BIEN. BIEN and Basic Income News do not endorse any particular policy, but Basic Income News welcomes discussion from all points of view in its Op-Ed section.